


The Snake Oil Job

by idelthoughts



Category: Highlander: The Series, Leverage
Genre: Clan Denial, Crossover, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-09-19 23:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17011434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: Sometimes, Immortal guys make the best dead guys.Or: Nathan Ford makes Richie Ryan an offer he can't refuse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadySilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/gifts).



If you’d spent any time at all in the art and antiques world, you knew of Nathan Ford. If you hadn’t met him, you knew someone who had, and there was always a memorable story that followed his name, either good or bad, depending on which side of the integrity fence you liked to make your home.

Richie had disliked Ford on principle from the minute Ford had strolled through into _MacLeod and Noël's Antiques_ to investigate an insurance claim in 1992. Their first conversation didn’t help, since it hadn’t been a friendly chat so much as an interrogation to find out if Duncan and Tessa had recruited a stray teenaged loser with a checkered background to steal the item from them for the insurance money. Ford smelled like a cop, and those always got Richie’s hackles up, even when they weren’t accusing him of theft (which they usually were, more often than not—and sometimes they were totally justified, but that certainly was not the point). Richie had sat with his arms crossed, glowering at the guy with his slicked back hair and fancy suit and refused to answer his questions with anything other than smart-ass quips until Mac had cuffed him upside the head and told him to answer honestly (but only after Mac had grilled Richie himself to make sure he was innocent. That had stung, no matter how short their acquaintance had been at the time). As soon as he was judged not to be a suspect, Richie expected that the insurance company would lose all interest in the case, and they wouldn’t hear anything ever again.

However, Ford hadn’t been just paperwork and hot air. It was only a week later that Ford came strolling through the door with the stolen statue and a somewhat vague and unbelievable story about interrupting a deal between a woman who was fencing the item and a German automobile mogul. There was a particular note of recognizable glee that hinted at a bigger and an only-somewhat legal tale, and despite Richie’s carefully cultivated teenage indifference, he angled for more information. He only got a smug smile and a wink in answer.

So at the end of it all, Ford earned Richie’s grudging respect. He might have smelled like a cop, but he had a sketchy streak a mile wide judging by the blanks between his story; a white knight in a black hat, and _that_ was something Richie could respect. Tessa and Duncan didn’t have to worry about the insurance claim, and the buyer Tessa had lined up was happy to get his item and dropped all pretences of suing them into the ground for taking his deposit and losing the art piece. The story had a happy ending, and Richie recalled it fondly despite how irritated he’d been at the time.

There’d been decades of stories between those relatively simple pre-Immortality times and now, and not all of them with happy endings. Richie was only thirty-five years old, but he was starting to deeply understand how drifting from life to life, collecting the broken threads of lives and relationships abandoned, made it hard to hang onto the good moments. He appreciated the little things which recalled those happy memories, but sometimes the triggers were unexpected; the thick waxy scent of a perfumed candle, or the cool wind off the sea hitting you just so on a hot summer day.

Or the sound of Nathan Ford’s voice drifting past from the booth behind you at a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood pub in Boston.

“It’ll work,” Ford was saying.

“You’ll never get him to file an FDA application, Nate.” The woman with a British accent sounded exhausted and impatient. “He’s not _that_ stupid. He knows his own ‘medicine’ is a scam, that’s the whole _point_.”

“Ah, but what if we make him believe he’s got hold of the real deal?”

It took Richie a minute to place the voice, but then the memory washed over him and the hairs on his neck pricked up at the sudden recognition. He casually slouched lower in his seat until he could catch a reflection off the glass of a framed photograph hanging on the brick wall and see the group of five people crammed into the booth behind him.

If not for that smug _holding all the cards_ tone, Richie wasn’t sure he’d have recognized him. Ford was a little older, a little heavier, and a whole lot shabbier than Richie remembered. He blended in with the dark wood and brass taps like he’d been born to the role of anchoring down a bar stool, and occupied the space like a true regular. Richie might have walked past him half a dozen times in the last few months and never known—a thought that made him cringe. He rifled through his drab recollections, but these days only the tingling sensation of recognizing another Immortal was enough to really make him sit up and take note. He was getting lazy, and that was no good.

 _Ford only met you twice, and over fifteen years ago,_ Richie reminded himself. _No way is he going to recognize you_.

That didn’t stop Richie shifting so there was no chance Ford would see his reflection in the glass in return.

“Yeah? And how you gonna do that?” A man with a hard-edged drawl joined the conversation, throwing down the question like a challenge.

“You’re not talking about a Midas Gambit, are you?” the Brit asked. “Because—”

“No, Sophie, way too complicated,” Ford said.

“Not to mention the apples.” The other woman at the table sat directly behind Richie, and the tip of her ponytail whipped Richie in the back of the neck as she snapped her head to the side and leaned close to one of her companions to mutter at him, “Have you ever spent the night in two tons of apples? Because I have.”

“No apples, Parker. I promise,” Ford said.

Despite himself, Richie shifted to better hear the conversation over the chatter of the other patrons. The bizarre happenstance of finding himself eavesdropping on Nate Ford, the know-it-all insurance man who’d irritated him so many years ago, was perilously close to an adventure.

Boy, he really needed to get a life, and soon. Unfortunately, that was proving more complicated than he’d hoped.

Last year, an unexpected highway motorcycle accident and a trip to the morgue had ended a good streak in San Diego. His carefully created fake identity had a very real death certificate issued, and couldn’t walk down the street without looking over his shoulder to wonder who might recognize his face and know he should be dead. He’d used some of his less reputable skills to enough cash for a bus ticket, got a ticket for a cross-country journey, and ended up in Boston.

For his first big identity shifts he’d had connections and help getting set up with a legitimate identity thanks to the Immortal Old Boys Club (or Girls Club, he should say, because it was Amanda who could really get her hands on anything). But she wasn’t anywhere to be found these days, off on some adventure somewhere. A misguided sense of pride had kept him from calling Mac; he didn’t want to be always turning to him to ask help, because… Well, just because. It was stupid, and he could fully acknowledge that, but he was going to figure this out on his own.

He’d been working nights for a delivery company—the only place that would pay him cash under the table and not make him fill out a damned W9—and he was making just enough to rent a room in a grotty old building a few blocks from this pub, which had slowly been turning into his local thanks to a bartender who was willing to take Richie at his word that he was old enough to have a pint with his meal. The most in-depth conversation he had most days was when the corner store clerk asked ‘do you need a bag?’

He kept to himself, and steered an extra-wide berth around any Immortal he sensed. He really couldn’t deal with all the crap that revolved around the Game right now. He had other things to worry about, like finding someone who could sell him a social security number so he could be a real person again. He wanted to live a grounded and settled life, if only for a little while. He didn’t want white picket fences and 2.5 kids or anything, but something more than this rootlessness would be nice.

But since that wasn’t happening any time soon, Richie settled in to listen and get his vicarious thrills through eavesdropping like a nosy old neighbor.

“Then what? A Ganges Rowboat Switch?” Sophie was asking.

“Is it the Arrogant Baron?” the cranky guy asked. “Because if it is, I vote we put Hardison in the rhino costume.”

“Oh, that’s just—thanks for that, Eliot. I’ll remember that,” Hardison said, indignant.

“Nope,” Ford said, and he left a dramatic pause before he spoke again. “We’re gonna pull a Lazarus Rising.”

The booth creaked as everyone shifted back or slumped in their seats, followed by a chorus of groans.

“That’s a con-man’s legend—”

“You’re nuts if you buy that bull—”

“—can’t be done!”

“We’ve got three days to figure it out,” Ford asserted over the overlapping protests.

“ _‘Figure it out?’_ So you don’t even have a plan?” Sophie scoffed, her voice sailing into a high-pitched squeak.

“Well, I do.” Ford said. “But, you see—”

“I knew it. He doesn’t even have a plan! Naw, forget it. I’m out.”

“Hey, Eliot,” Nate protested.

“Nope!”

Richie got a glimpse of a stocky build and shoulder-length hair as Eliot stomped past and banged his way through the door to the street.

“And I hate apples.”

“Parker, I already said—”

“No. Apples,” Parker hissed, and then she flounced off after Eliot.

“Sorry, Nate,” said Sophie, and then she was gone.

Ford heaved a sigh, and the one remaining guy, Hardison, made a sympathetic noise. Whatever he was trying to pitch, he’d failed hard. Richie felt a little bad for the guy, but if this was what the back of the insurance industry looked like, then Richie had even less understanding of how it worked than he’d imagined. Just as well he had stuck to the blue collar grunt work. You couldn’t mess up tossing boxes.

“Now, if they’d just listened, I could have told them that we had a pretty good idea,” Ford said.

“Pretty good,” Hardison echoed.

The pitch of Ford’s voice was too loud, and his and Hardison’s tones were suddenly different. Not conversational anymore, but stilted, like they were reading lines.

“You see, there’s a dangerous man out there who is passing himself off as a doctor. He’s targeting vulnerable people, sick people. He’s selling them poison and telling them it will cure them.”

“A real piece of work,” Hardison agreed, and Hardison’s body weight shifted on the bench behind him.

Richie paused, glass halfway to his mouth, and the sound of the pub faded beneath the roaring rush of his pulse.

“He tells them he can cure anything—even death.”

Richie set the glass back down as Nate Ford dropped into the booth bench opposite him and laced his hands together on the tabletop.

His companion, Hardison, folded himself into the bench seat next to Ford and slapped down a stuffed manila folder, affecting a serious expression like he was the backup muscle. The effect was lessened by the fact that Hardison had all the intimidating presence of a lanky giraffe, and that he was armed only with paperwork.

“Long time, no see, Richie,” Ford said.

“I think you’ve made a mistake, my friend,” Richie said with a short chuckle, opting to bluff his way out of this. He pushed his glass aside and shook his head. “You guys have a good night.”

He grabbed his jacket off the bench beside him, grasping the handle of his hidden sword through the fabric. He wasn’t going to start swinging it in here, but he still took comfort in having it in hand.

“Oh, oh no—no, I don’t think so. No, we got this one right on the money.” Hardison flipped open the manila folder and slid it across the table to Richie.

Richie froze. It was a color copy of one of his old driver’s license—the legit one he’d gotten during his mortal life, with his real birth date and everything—and in a shirt that was now twenty years out of style and an expiry date that was much the same. He’d liked that shirt, but he’d worn holes in it after twelve years and had to let it go. For such a mundane loss, he’d taken it hard. The driver’s license had gone to a watery grave with the wallet he’d thrown off the bridge as he’d left Seacouver for the last time to head down to San Diego.

Richie put a hand on the printed paper and shifted the stack to find even more damning evidence: his signature on a bank statement, a gym membership card, and—

“Is that my _middle school yearbook photo_?”

“You were a cute kid.” Hardison pulled the folder back and picked up the paper and leaned towards Ford, pointing at the photo as he cooed, “Aww. Just look at those curls, Nate. Look at ‘em.” Then he flipped to a different paper and pulled it out. “But this here, this is the most interesting of the bunch.”

There it was: the death certificate from last year. A different name, a different birth date, but they’d found it. Strung together his shift from one identity to the next, and now here it was, all one big story.

Richie sat back in the booth and looked at Hardison, whose pleased grin at his own cleverness slipped a little when he met Richie’s eye. Ford, however, just kept smiling that same smug smile Richie remembered, like he had a whole lot of secrets and he wasn’t telling.

Richie knew he should walk away and get on a bus again to anywhere but here. But damn it, he was never good at losing gracefully, and even worse at a strategic retreat. Plus, he was still too curious to keep his mouth shut.

He reached out and grabbed his beer again, slouching with exaggerated indifference.

“So what do you want, _Nate_?” he asked, put a slight sneering emphasis on the familiar name.

Nate grinned at Richie, wide and shark-like.

"I think you and I can help each other out.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's be real, there was no way I was getting out of writing the rest of the con. There's more to come after this at some point.
> 
> Thank you to LadySilver, who has gone from gift fic recipient to long-suffering beta. She always knows the right combination of positive reinforcement/coercion tactics to inspire forward movement.

The people from the bar table downstairs lounged in scattered parts of the apartment. In the living room, a sectional couch dominated the open plan area. Eliot, the stocky man with a sour expression that matched his irritable exit, sat with a beer in hand and his feet up on the low coffee table, arm along the back of the couch.  There was a barely perceptible pause in his sip as his gaze flicked over Richie, and then he raised an eyebrow and glanced to his right where Parker, the petite blonde woman, sat curled at the end of the couch. She narrowed her eyes to slits as the three of them entered, watching them with alert suspicion that reminded Richie of a documentary he’d seen featuring a pissed off mongoose. 

In the kitchen, the tall woman with dark hair, Sophie, had spread a bunch of fancy snacks on the counter—little olives, expensive cheeses, and a loaf of crusty bread that looked like a Tuscan peasant had been crammed into a cupboard for the express purpose of generating fancy bread.  She was midway through smearing some spicy mustard onto a piece of bread when they entered, and she paused and set both down when she registered that Richie was with Nate and Hardison. 

Hardison flopped down on the other length of couch, grabbing up a keyboard that had been discarded there, and immediately began tapping at keys. A series of incomprehensible green text strings on black popped up on one of the series of TV panels which nearly tiled an entire wall. The setup looked like a gamer’s wet dream, with an entire wall, and Hardison looked like the geek in charge. Richie idly scanned for a game system—he missed the friend he’d had down in San Diego who’d introduced him to the exciting world of RPGs, and swash-buckling his way through piratical seas in Assassin’s Creed had been completely entertaining. Worth it, too, for the one time he’d mentioned it to Amanda when she cruised through town and she’d made a face at the idea of parts of history she’d participated in being made into a video game. Almost as good as the time he’d asked Mac to come over for a Braveheart movie night, so that he could pick apart the historical accuracies. Oh, the look on his face; Richie hadn’t been able to watch the movie through his own tears of laughter. 

There was an immediate sense of team amongst these people. The memories of old friends combined with being faced with this tight-knit group in front of him sent a wash of sadness over him. 

“Who’s your friend, Nate?” Sophie asked into the awkward silence. 

“Everyone, meet Richie. He’s an old friend of mine. He’s going to be working with us for this job.” 

Ford clapped Richie on the shoulder and tried to steer him towards a chair in the middle of the room, but Richie resisted the gentle direction and folded his arms as he stuck to the spot. His jacket was clutched in one hand, and he let it carefully hang so as to keep his blade hidden. He was not moving anywhere that wasn’t with an exit at his back, no matter how much Ford presented this as a ‘mutually beneficial deal.’ 

After a slight hesitation, Ford patted Richie’s shoulder and moved past him into the room. He went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and poured himself a generous helping of scotch, then took up station on a tall stool. 

“‘Old friend,’” Eliot said after taking another pull from the beer bottle. “Did you used to babysit him?” 

“He’s older than he looks,” Hardison snorted, grinning as he tapped away at the keyboard. 

“Did I miss something? Are we hiring?” Parker shifted to kneel on the couch cushions so she could frown at Ford. 

“You didn’t miss anything, Parker. But we all agreed we needed some help for this con, didn’t we? Richie’s something of an expert.” 

“In what, dying?” Eliot sneered. 

Ford gave Richie a look over the rim of his glass that sparkled with mischief. 

Richie rolled his eyes; they were having way too much fun with this, and he had no interest in being the punchline to this joke of theirs. 

“Yeah, actually. It’s kind of my specialty. So, let’s get this job over with, then we can go our separate ways. Sound good?” 

The room was quiet enough to hear the soft fizzing of the carbonated sparkling drink Sophie had poured. 

“That’s weird, right?” Parker whispered to Hardison from the side of her mouth. “I think that’s weird.” 

“That’s what I said when Nate first told me, but turns out truth is weirder than fiction,” Hardison said. 

With a final tap of keys, the electronic version of the paper trail file that they’d presented him with downstairs spread across the tiled screens on the wall. A wave of cold fire travelled down Richie’s spine all the way to his toes as the documents flicked into disturbing order. He had to give Hardison his due—he was really good at this whole computer whiz kid thing. 

Huh. First time he’d thought of a grown adult, one who looked older than Richie, as a kid. Was this how it started? One giant slide down into seeing the entire world as a bunch of children running around? How long before he looked at a guy like Ford and instead of seeing an old crafty dude lording a few decades of experience over everyone like it made them so much wiser and better, he saw a stupid kid who thought he was so much smarter than everyone else and had no idea how complex the world really was? 

He blinked back from the thought to find all gazes turned his way. 

“What the hell is going on here, Nate?” Eliot pointed to Hardison. “I’m gonna break your little keyboard if you helped him with this. You should know better than this. You don’t run a con on your own people.” 

“Hey!” Hardison quickly snatched his keyboard up and cuddled it to his chest, leaning back and giving Eliot an indignant look. “Nate says he knows for a fact this is the same kid he met in 1992 and that he’d bet his life on it, and I wasn’t going to try and prove him wrong? I didn’t think we were gonna, you know, find out he was really immortal. Unless he’s way better than I am at planting false data, that dude has been lurking around pulling a Dorian Gray for the last thirty years.” 

Ford held up a hand to forestall more interjections as he took another long drink, then put down his glass, ticking off points on his fingers as he spoke. 

“I’ll admit I don’t know the fine print. All I’ve got is: proof of birth in 1974, proof of death in 2008—including some very convincing autopsy photos—and personally meeting Mr. Ryan in 1992, who looked as rosy cheeked and youthful at eighteen as he does today. So, here we are. This nice young man before you, not so young.” 

He put his glass down and gestured to Richie expansively, as though handing him the floor. 

“And not so nice,” Richie said. “This isn’t charity work, dude. You give me the identity package, he wipes…” he waved his hands to encompass all the data spread across the screens, “all of that out of existence.” 

“And what exactly do you have to do in exchange for that offer?” Sophie asked. She stepped around the counter, elegant in an outfit that far outclassed the afternoon activity of hanging out in a pub, and she folded her arms as she came over and scanned his face. 

Richie decided to pull the cord and try to get this over with as fast as possible. 

The fastest way would be offing himself, letting them freak out over the body, then coming back. However, that was a straight line to a headache that would last a day, and also putting himself out of commission in a room full of people he did not trust. 

“I die a few times. I think poison was Nate’s idea, but hell—dealer’s choice. Shoot me, stab me, whatever. I’ll come back. You get this dude you’re trying to con, I go my merry way and you go yours. Deal’s a deal.” 

Richie flopped down on a chair near the dining room table to his right and stuck his feet up on the tabletop, giving Sophie a grin as he did. He carefully draped his jacket and concealed sword across his lap and shot Nate a significant look. That was the end of his part. He had no responsibility to convince this group of people. 

Sophie was horrified, Parker looked intrigued, and Eliot was inscrutable—he always seemed to look cranky. Nate quickly got that he was being left to flounder, and Hardison was studiously looking away from him and refusing to leap in to help. 

“So what you’re saying is that if you shoot him, he won’t die,” Parker said slowly to Nate. 

She didn’t seem to have yet decided it was okay to talk directly to Richie, but she hadn’t yet let her eyes leave him. He waggled his eyebrows at her, and she wrinkled her nose and pulled back her head suspiciously. 

“Yes, he’ll die, Parker.” Nate was looking worn around the edges, and a little worse for the drink he’d now drained. “But then he’ll get better.” 

Richie blinked when Parker, who moved with disconcerting speed and eerie silence, leapt off the couch and came close to loom over him. He swore to God she sniffed him. He edged back just a touch, unconsciously tightening his hand over the hilt of the sword through the jacket. 

“Poison? Really?” she asked. 

“Yep,” Richie said. 

“Electrocution?” 

“I can take a fair jolt,” he said dryly. He wasn’t even going to begin to try explaining that part of Immortality. “But yeah.” 

“Drowning? Exsanguination?” 

“Look, I appreciate the enthusiastic review of literally every horrible way to die, but the answer is the same.” 

“Decapitation?” 

Suddenly Parker’s face filling his field of vision became an uncomfortable threat, especially with that toothy victory smile, because she’d caught his abrupt tension and knew she’d hit a mark. Damn it, he needed to shake that tell. 

There was no hint of a weapon on her, and he wouldn’t have missed the tingling awareness of another immortal, but even so he snuck his hand under the jacket and gripped the hilt of his blade. 

Parker’s eyes widened as she abruptly jerked backwards. 

Eliot thrust Parker behind him and took up a wide stance to block Richie from the rest of the room. Richie was out of his chair in an instant, blade up and ready before he’d given it a second thought. Eliot raised an eyebrow and snorted as though amused, but he didn’t flinch or drop his guard. 

“A sword, man? Really? That’s the most practical weapon you come up with to smuggle around in a biker’s jacket?” 

“What can I say? It comes in handy.” Richie took a step back towards the door, keeping his eye on Eliot. 

“Richie, what are you doing?” Nate had on the stern voice of every and soon-to-be-disappointed teacher in Richie’s life. “Put that down.” 

“Listen to him. Put it down before you get hurt, kid,” Eliot said. 

“Before I get hurt?” Richie scoffed. “That is not the most likely outcome of this scenario, friend.” 

He could practically hear Mac grumbling behind him that losing his temper wouldn’t do him any good, but there was nothing as irritating as the condescending attitude of people who thought he was too young to know better, too inexperienced and naive— 

Eliot tensed, just enough to give away his coming lunge to the right. Richie was already countering the move when Eliot shifted on a dime and came at him from the left. Weight off-center, Richie pivoted to counter and retreat, catching Eliot’s hammer swing and letting his momentum send Eliot past him. Richie continued his off-balance fall and turned it into a roll over the dining room table. 

“That’s my nana’s!” Hardison howled from the couch as a flower vase skidded across the surface and smashed on the floor. 

Richie regained his equilibrium and grinned at Eliot. 

“Too slow, my man.” 

Eliot cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, giving a low growl like a pissed off wolverine, and settled into a fighting stance—he was some kind of ex-military, Richie guessed. Eliot was ready to go bare-knuckle it, which took some moxy when squaring up against a guy with a sword. While Richie didn’t like the idea of fighting a mortal with a blade, he wasn’t about to cast aside the advantage. 

Duncan and Methos had handed Richie his ass many times while sparring without giving him so much as a scratch by keeping the blade flat and using the hilt. He’d bet cash money Eliot had a knife somewhere on him but probably no gun, so Richie could afford to take the time to teach Eliot some humility without causing him much damage before Richie made an exit. 

“Guys, no fighting in the house!” 

Nate flapped his arms in a useless pinwheeling gesture, and in the fraction of a second where the motion caught the corner of Richie’s eye, Eliot stepped into a neat snap kick and flipped the dining room table on edge. 

Richie struck automatically, and was rewarded with the shock wave of metal meeting solid wood. It was a finishing blow, hard enough to rattle his teeth and numb his palms—and where had all his good intentions gone of not harming any mortals?—and his blade stuck fast in the wood. 

Eliot snagged the table by one leg and flung it, which ripped the stuck sword from Richie’s hands. Eliot slid through the tangle of chairs like lightning and got hold of Richie’s extended arm. 

Richie didn’t fight the grip, but instead used it and Eliot’s momentum to get close and deliver a solid knee strike to Eliot’s gut. It didn’t work; Eliot managed a neat collapse and twist which ended with Eliot behind Richie. Richie’s arm was pinned behind him, twisted at a painful angle. 

He knew the move—force your opponent to stop fighting, or face a dislocated shoulder, or a snapped wrist. 

Well, there were worse things than either of those. 

“You gonna settle down now?” Eliot growled. 

Richie grit his teeth and slammed his full weight back. 

His wrist snapped first, followed by his shoulder dislocating with a sick crunch, and he yelped at the flaming pain. Eliot’s grip loosened as he cursed in surprise. That was all the opening Richie needed. 

Richie delivered a brutal sidekick to Eliot’s chest, sending him reeling back to the floor gasping for breath. He whirled with a roar to deliver the final blow to put Eliot down for good, but something hard struck him on the temple. He flinched as it exploded and the overwhelming scent of apple filled his nostrils. Juice and pulp blinded him. 

In the second he was busy sputtering and trying to clear his vision, Eliot swarmed up and tackled him. Next thing he knew he was in a professional police hold on the floor, face smashed into the floorboards. No mercy on the broken wrist and dislocated shoulder this time—Eliot dug his knee right in the small of Richie’s back and pinned both arms. He weighed a ton for a little guy, like his entire frame was made of metal.  _ Maybe he really is Wolverine _ , Richie thought. 

He bucked hard, nearly unseating Eliot, but the movement sent a wave of pain through him that blacked out the edges of his vision. A thudding weight landed on his hips and across his legs as Hardison flopped over him. Richie gave a last half-hearted kick that caught Hardison in the ribs before he shifted and better pinned his legs. 

“Hey, turbo! There’s more where that came from if you’re not careful.” Parker squatted in his field of vision, tossing an apple in the air like a pitcher readying for a throw. 

“Where did it come from?” Hardison demanded, breathless. “We don’t have any apples. You don’t have any pockets.” 

Parker ignored Hardison, only took a bite of the apple and stared Richie down as she chewed. 

Richie didn’t know if he was more furious at himself for being beaten like this, or having put himself in this situation in the first place. If this was a Challenge, he’d be short a head right now—and he’d deserve it. He was at the bottom of a dog pile, brought down by a twig of a person wielding an apple. Talk about low points in life. 

He tried to buck again, but Eliot tweaked on his injured arm. Richie clenched his teeth and grunted in pain. 

“Don’t try it,” Eliot warned. 

“Eliot, Hardison, enough. Let him go,” Nate said. 

“Yeah, let me go, Eliot,” Richie ground out, but it lacked any bite; the adrenaline had faded enough that his arm was in agony. Damn it, how long was this going to take to heal? 

“Are you nuts? He’s packing a sword, a damned Gothic bastard, and you want me to let him go?” 

“He’s injured!” Nate protested. “Look at his arm! Did you have to break his wrist?” 

“He broke his own wrist. And don’t try to tell me he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.” 

Eliot and Nate’s bickering turned into a full shouting match taking place over Richie’s back, which Hardison and Parker joined in on. It all faded to a haze of noise as the shooting pain through Richie’s wrist and shoulder clouded his head. Despite his best attempts to stay focused, his attention turned inward as he breathed through it, waiting out the minutes until his body decided to repair itself. 

“Enough!” 

Sophie’s voice cut through the ruckus, silencing them like a bunch of unruly children. 

The click of her heels came near his ear, then a gentle hand rested on the back of his head. 

“Eliot is going to let you go, Richie. We won’t stop you if you decide to leave, but we’d like to make sure you’re okay. We can talk, if you’re willing.” 

“Sophie, that’s not—” Eliot started, but he cut off. 

Whatever silent communication passed above him, Sophie won it. The grip on his arm eased, and then Eliot and Hardison’s combined weight was off him. 

Richie intended to roll to his feet and get his back to the door again, but his arm still dragged uselessly. Instead he got to his feet slowly and carefully, assessing as he moved. The bones in his wrist were already knitting, but his shoulder was still dislocated. 

“Now, why don’t you all have a seat and let us see to your arm?” Sophie said. “Nate, call a doctor, we—” 

“No doctors,” Richie said quickly.  “I’ll be fine in a minute.” 

Richie raised his arm as far as he could, got hold of it with his good one and reached up. The sound of the joint popping back into the socket sounded like chicken bones crunching. Everyone in the room flinched back and winced, making sounds of horror and protest. 

The relief was immediate. Already he could feel the tingling sensation of tissue healing itself now that the trauma was reduced. He wiggled his fingers, finding his wrist nearly healed. 

“Buggering hell,” Sophie said, gone pale beneath her makeup. “Warn a girl before you do something like that.” 

Richie touched his tongue to his bottom lip, finding the last hint of a split healing. He touched the back of his fingers to it, and sure enough it was bloodied. 

Nate tossed a damp cloth at him—from a very safe distance, Richie noted—and then retreated to his bar stool. Richie wiped his face free of blood and apple. His face was hot, and not from lingering pain. He was so damned humiliated that he was actually blushing. If that wasn’t the last straw… 

“Would you like some ice?” Sophie asked tentatively. 

Richie snorted. He tossed the rag at the wreckage of the dining room table. It slopped across the blade of his sword that was still stuck fast in the edge of the tabletop. 

“Nah, I’m good.”  He rotated his wrist and then swung his arms around in a pinwheeling gesture. That still hurt like a bitch, but in the interest of making his point, he refused to let it show. “Told you, nothing sticks.” 

Sophie goggled at him. 

“Your—his… ! But Eliot—  Nate, he’s…!” 

Eliot was squinting at Richie uncertainly, and Hardison was gawping like a fish right alongside Sophie. Parker continued to eat her apple. 

Nate rolled his eyes and gave a tired sigh. 

“Look, if we’re all done trashing my apartment, can we sit back down and finish working out the plan? I’ve given Richie the details of Plan A and Backup Plan B, but we’ve still got Backup Plans C through J to review, and I’d like to get this show on the road.” 

No one paid him any mind, and an awkward silence fell. Richie kept a careful eye on Eliot, but other than sizing him up in return, he made no hostile moves. Richie considered it a truce. 

“Is that what it’s like when you… die?” Sophie asked after another moment. 

“That it heals up?  Yeah. Sometimes it takes longer, if it’s… you know. Bad.” He shrugged, and his shoulder barely gave a twinge. 

“Does it hurt?” 

Richie blinked at her, surprised by the question. He glanced at Nate, but Nate avoided his gaze, busy staring into the bottom of the glass he’d refilled. 

“Honestly. Does it hurt?” Sophie repeated. 

“Depends,” Richie said, hedging. “Sure, I guess. Sometimes.” 

Sophie stared at him for a handful of seconds, then she shook her head. 

“Oh, Nate, this is unconscionable, even for you.” 

“What?” Nate slid off the bar stool and threw his arms wide in protest. “You’re kidding me. We all agreed that the only plan that would succeed to shut down Archer— who is _actually_ killing people _very_ _permanently_ with his bogus ‘cure’ I might add—is if we can pull off a literal raise-the-dead miracle and convince him he’s got the real thing so he’ll try to go legit and get himself very publicly discredited. I find the impossible, a guy who can and will do it—” 

“Can we get back to the fact that he had a sword? In his jacket?” Eliot put in. 

“Oh. Yeah. I didn’t know he had a sword,”  Nate said with an awkward pause. He looked to Richie. “Why do you have a sword?” 

“Just in case of emergencies,” Richie said. 

“Oh, like when those emergency duels break out,” Hardison retorted. 

“Dude, you’d be surprised.” 

Nate came closer, and Sophie turned away from him with crossed arms and a sniff. Nate opened his mouth as though he’d speak to her, then seemed to think better of it and turned back to Richie. 

“I get it, I’m asking a lot. Maybe more than I should. But, there are people it will help. People who can’t help themselves, but who we can protect. If you help us help them, I promise you, we will live up to our side of the deal.” 

Nate stuck out a hand to Richie. Richie hesitated, but then took it. They shook. 

Behind them, Parker gave a loud snort. 

“‘Live up to it?’” Parker said around a mouthful of apple in response to a bunch of blank stares. “It’s funny ‘cause he’s gonna die.” 

“You’re sick, you know that?” Eliot said to her. 

Despite himself, Richie was starting to really like Parker. She kind of reminded him of Amanda—minus the 1000 years of hard living and weaponized sexuality.  Or maybe it was just the blonde hair and deadly aim. 

He surveyed the bunch of them, and despite knowing he should walk out right now…he didn’t. 

Oh hell. He was such a sucker for a sob story and do-gooder idiots. 

“All right, give me the rest of the backup plans, Mister Mastermind,” Richie said. 


End file.
